East of Eden

439 Pages·2003·1.29 MB·English

by  Russell Champeau

JOHN STEINBECK – EAST OF EDEN

PENGUIN BOOKS

EAST OF EDEN

John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, in 1902.
The town is a few miles from the Pacific Coast and near the
fertile Salinas Valley—an area that was to be the
background of much of his fiction. He studied marine
biology at Stanford University but left without taking a
degree and, after a series of laboring jobs, began to write.
An attempt at a free-lance literary career in New York City
failed, and he returned to California, continuing to write in
a lonely cottage. Popular success came to him only in 1935
with Tortilla Flat. That book’s promise was confirmed by
succeeding works—In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men,
and especially The Grapes of Wrath, a novel so powerful
that it remains among the archetypes of American culture.
Often set in California, Steinbeck’s later books include
Cannery Row, The Wayward Bus, East of Eden, The Short
Reign of Pippin IV, and Travels with Charley. He died in
1968, having won a Nobel Prize in 1962. In announcing the
award, the Swedish Academy declared: “He had no mind to
be an unoffending comforter and entertainer. Instead, the
topics he chose were serious and denunciatory, for instance
the bitter strikes on California’s fruit and cotton
plantations. ... His literary power steadily gained impetus.
... The little masterpiece Of Mice and Men ... was followed
by those incomparable short stories which he collected
together in the volume The Long Valley. The way had now
been paved for the great work ... the epic chronicle The
Grapes of Wrath.”

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JOHN STEINBECK – EAST OF EDEN
BY JOHN STEINBECK

FICTION
Cup of Gold
The Pastures of Heaven
To a God Unknown
Tortilla Flat
In Dubious Battle
Saint Katy the Virgin
Of Mice and Men
The Red Pony
The Long Valley
The Grapes of Wrath
The Moon Is Down
Cannery Row
The Wayward Bus
The Pearl
Burning Bright: A Play in Story Form
East of Eden
Sweet Thursday
The Winter of Our Discontent
The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication

NONFICTION
Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research
(in collaboration with Edward F. Ricketts)
Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team
A Russian Journal (with pictures by Robert Capa)
The Log from the Sea of Cortez
Once There Was a War
Travels with Charley in Search of America
America and Americans
Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters

PLAYS, A DOCUMENTARY, AND A SCREENPLAY
Of Mice and Men
The Moon Is Down
The Forgotten Village
Viva Zapata!

COLLECTIONS
The Portable Steinbeck
The Short Novels of John Steinbeck
Steinbeck: A Life in Letters

CRITICAL LIBRARY EDITION
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JOHN STEINBECK – EAST OF EDEN
The Grapes of Wrath
(edited by Peter Lisca)

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JOHN STEINBECK – EAST OF EDEN

EAST
OF EDEN
JOHN STEINBECK

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JOHN STEINBECK – EAST OF EDEN
PENGUIN BOOKS

Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England
Penguin Books, 625 Madison Avenue,
New York, New York 10022, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,
Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Limited, 2801 John Street,
Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R 1B4
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,
Auckland 10, New Zealand

First published in the United States of America by
The Viking Press 1952
First published in Canada by The Macmillan Company of
Canada Limited 1952
Viking Compass Edition published 1970
Reprinted 1974
Published in Penguin Books 1979

Copyright 1952 by John Steinbeck
All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968.
East of Eden.
I. Title.
[PZ3.S8195Eas 1979] [PS3537.T3234] 813’.5’2 79-14915
ISBN 0 14 00.4997 5

Printed in the United States of America by
Offset Paperback Mfrs., Inc., Dallas, Pennsylvania
Set in Times Roman

Except in the United States of America,
this book is sold subject to the condition
that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,
be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated
without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed

on the subsequent purchaser

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JOHN STEINBECK – EAST OF EDEN
PASCAL COVICI
Dear Pat,
You came upon me carving some kind of little figure out of wood and you said, “Why
don’t you make something for me?”
I asked you what you wanted, and you said, “A box.”
“What for?”
“To put things in.”
“What things?”
“Whatever you have,” you said.
Well, here’s your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and
excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts—the
pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.
And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you.
And still the box is not full.
JOHN

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JOHN STEINBECK – EAST OF EDEN
Contents
PART ONE.........................................................................................................................8
Chapter 1.........................................................................................................................9
Chapter 2.......................................................................................................................11
Chapter 3.......................................................................................................................14
Chapter 4.......................................................................................................................22
Chapter 5.......................................................................................................................24
Chapter 6.......................................................................................................................27
Chapter 7.......................................................................................................................31
Chapter 8.......................................................................................................................39
Chapter 9.......................................................................................................................47
Chapter 10.....................................................................................................................51
Chapter 11.....................................................................................................................56
PART TWO......................................................................................................................64
Chapter 12.....................................................................................................................65
Chapter 13.....................................................................................................................66
Chapter 14.....................................................................................................................73
Chapter 15.....................................................................................................................76
Chapter 16.....................................................................................................................85
Chapter 17.....................................................................................................................89
Chapter 18.....................................................................................................................98
Chapter 19...................................................................................................................104
Chapter 20...................................................................................................................109
Chapter 21...................................................................................................................115
Chapter 22...................................................................................................................120
PART THREE................................................................................................................130
Chapter 23...................................................................................................................131
Chapter 24...................................................................................................................138
Chapter 25...................................................................................................................146
Chapter 26...................................................................................................................154
Chapter 27...................................................................................................................158
Chapter 28...................................................................................................................166
Chapter 29...................................................................................................................171
Chapter 30...................................................................................................................175
Chapter 31...................................................................................................................180
Chapter 32...................................................................................................................184
Chapter 33...................................................................................................................189
PART FOUR...................................................................................................................194
Chapter 34...................................................................................................................195
Chapter 35...................................................................................................................196
Chapter 36...................................................................................................................198
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JOHN STEINBECK – EAST OF EDEN
Chapter 37...................................................................................................................203
Chapter 38...................................................................................................................209
Chapter 39...................................................................................................................213
Chapter 40...................................................................................................................221
Chapter 41...................................................................................................................225
Chapter 42...................................................................................................................229
Chapter 43...................................................................................................................230
Chapter 44...................................................................................................................234
Chapter 45...................................................................................................................238
PART FIVE....................................................................................................................245
Chapter 46...................................................................................................................246
Chapter 47...................................................................................................................248
Chapter 48...................................................................................................................250
Chapter 49...................................................................................................................253
Chapter 50...................................................................................................................261
Chapter 51...................................................................................................................266
Chapter 52...................................................................................................................272
Chapter 53...................................................................................................................276
Chapter 54...................................................................................................................280
Chapter 55...................................................................................................................283
About the e-Book............................................................................................................288

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JOHN STEINBECK – EAST OF EDEN
PART ONE

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JOHN STEINBECK – EAST OF EDEN
Chapter 1
1
The Salinas Valley is in Northern California. It is a long narrow swale between two
ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at
last into Monterey Bay.
I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a
toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer—and what trees and
seasons smelled like—how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of
odors is very rich.
I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay
mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb
into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother.
They were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love. The Santa Lucias stood up
against the sky to the west and kept the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and
brooding—unfriendly and dangerous. I always found in myself a dread of west and a love
of east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that the morning
came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back from the ridges of the
Santa Lucias. It may be that the birth and death of the day had some part in my feeling
about the two ranges of mountains.
From both sides of the valley little streams slipped out of the hill canyons and fell into
the bed of the Salinas River. In the winter of wet years the streams ran full-freshet, and
they swelled the river until sometimes it raged and boiled, bank full, and then it was a
destroyer. The river tore the edges of the farm lands and washed whole acres down; it
toppled barns and houses into itself, to go floating and bobbing away. It trapped cows and
pigs and sheep and drowned them in its muddy brown water and carried them to the sea.
Then when the late spring came, the river drew in from its edges and the sand banks
appeared. And in the summer the river didn’t run at all above ground. Some pools would
be left in the deep swirl places under a high bank. The tules and grasses grew back, and
willows straightened up with the flood debris in their upper branches. The Salinas was
only a part-time river. The summer sun drove it underground. It was not a fine river at all,
but it was the only one we had and so we boasted about it—how dangerous it was in a
wet winter and how dry it was in a dry summer. You can boast about anything if it’s all
you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.
The floor of the Salinas Valley, between the ranges and below the foothills, is level
because this valley used to be the bottom of a hundred-mile inlet from the sea. The river
mouth at Moss Landing was centuries ago the entrance to this long inland water. Once,
fifty miles down the valley, my father bored a well. The drill came up first with topsoil
and then with gravel and then with white sea sand full of shells and even pieces of whale-
bone. There were twenty feet of sand and then black earth again, and even a piece of
redwood, that imperishable wood that does not rot. Before the inland sea the valley must
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